


Clearer In The Dark

by venividivictorious



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Baby's First Fanfic, Bedtime Stories, Chloe Loves Her Devil, F/M, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, Post-Season/Series 04, Protective Lucifer, Soft Chloe Decker, Soft Stepdevil, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trixie Decker & Lucifer Morningstar Bonding, Trixie Decker & Lucifer Morningstar Fluff, Trixie Disapproves Of God's Parenting Choices, implied/referenced PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venividivictorious/pseuds/venividivictorious
Summary: Lucifer finds it hard to relax enough to go to sleep after he comes back from Hell. Trixie wants to help.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Trixie Decker & Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 55
Kudos: 606





	Clearer In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @venividivictorious, come yell at me!

“Lucifer?”

The voice behind him is small and sleepy. He turns his head towards it. 

Trixie Decker has shot up like a weed in the thousands of - no, the _six months_ \- he’s been gone. Her pyjamas are a little short at the ankle, her hair a bit shorter. She’s rubbing her eyes drowsily with one hand. 

“Offspring.”

“What are you doing?”

He gestures vaguely at the detective’s chunky television set, playing...something. He’s not too sure what. He hasn’t been paying attention for a while. The last thing he remembers was some tasteless cartoon. “Watching TV.”

“You’re watching _infomercials_ ?” she says, like it’s abnormal. On the screen, a grinning woman with a tan seven shades too orange even for Hell is showing off some gaudy jewelry with a flourish. Okay. Maybe it _is_ abnormal. Before he can respond, though, the spawn says, “I meant, what are you doing in our house? It’s three a.m.”

_Is it?_

“I…”

And what’s he supposed to tell her? He doesn’t know that himself. His penthouse - because it’s still his penthouse, just as he left it; because even though he’d left everything he had to the detective she’d been so determined to fetch him back that she’d kept it ready for him and he will never, ever deserve her - has far superior alcohol, and a gigantic bed with silk sheets that smell enough like her that he knows she’s slept there a few times since he left. 

But no. He’s here. On the detective’s lumpy couch watching garbage early morning television with an almost-finished glass of that hideous cheap nonsense she calls cabernet sauvignon, zoning out into the middle-distance and trying not to doze off, because he still feels like some incorrigible upstart will stick six inches of Hell-forged steel in his back if he doesn’t keep an eye on it.

Two eyes. Plus one in the back of his head. Demons are sneaky little bastards like that. It had all been so much easier the first time around. At least then he’d had Maze. 

“What are you doing up?” he shoots back instead, because he’s not sure he can find a child-friendly way to circumnavigate the truth right now. 

She shrugs. “I was thirsty.”

He doesn’t respond, just listens to her fluffy slippers padding into the kitchen. The pop of the fridge opening. The low buzz of...ah, the microwave. The static from the television, the volume turned down low. Somewhere upstairs the janky bathroom pipe lets out an occasional clunk. 

Why the detective didn’t move into the penthouse, he’ll never understand. Although part of him is very much relieved that she didn’t haul him out of Hell to the wrong kind of toys in his fun closet and sticky little spawn-prints all over his beloved baby grand. 

“Here,” says the spawn, and suddenly she’s at his elbow and holding out a chipped mug with _World’s Best Mom_ scrawled on it in swirly writing. 

He takes it. “What’s this?”

“Hot cocoa.” Another shrug, and she steps over his outstretched legs to sit beside him on the couch, a little too close for Lucifer’s liking, clutching her own mug of hot chocolate. Hers says _if daughters were flowers, I’d pick you_. The corner of his mouth twitches. Humans really are sickening, sometimes. 

“Thank you,” he says automatically, and takes a sip. It burns his tongue, because it’s fresh and the detective is asleep upstairs and he is an _idiot_ , and the little parasite laughs at him. 

“You’re meant to blow on it first.”

He laughs weakly with her. She tucks her legs up underneath her, blowing on her own mug, content for a moment to be quiet. He stares blankly at the television, resting his mug on his knee. 

Eventually, she turns to face him and asks, “Lucifer, do you have nightmares?”

“About what?” he asks mildly, only half listening to her. The human world is so noisy; he’d forgotten how loud it really is. It’s nice. His chambers in his palace in Hell are totally silent. He’s missed the distant traffic, the faint hum of electric lights, the detective’s bloody snoring - she sounds like the engine of Mazikeen’s favourite motorcycle. 

“I dunno. Hell?”

That has him sitting up, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “You know?”

She gives him a Look. The one she’s clearly inherited from the detective, the one with a capital L. “Duh.”

“Since when?”

“Since ever. You always _said_ you were the devil. And you don’t lie.” A pause. “And Maze showed me her face when I was eight.”

“Of course she did.” He rubs his hand across his face. Sighs. Bloody Maze. “And no. I don’t have nightmares about Hell.”

His nightmares are about falling, endlessly falling, his wings useless and broken and his skin burning away, but he doesn’t think the detective would appreciate him telling her offspring that. 

“Huh.” She warms her little fingers on the outside of her mug. “You just look really tired. Mom said you had a bad time when you were gone.”

Her voice is quiet, almost sad. Something in his chest hurts at the thought that she might have missed him. “It’s been a while since I had a good night’s sleep. Hell is…”

Beside him, Trixie suddenly says a word in Lilim, a word that can loosely be translated as _s_ _hithole._

His head whips round. Trixie shrugs. “What? That’s what Maze calls it. She always sounds like she misses it, though. You don’t.”

He laughs, genuinely laughs, hand over his mouth to keep it down so he doesn’t wake the detective. “I was going to go with ‘not very safe’, but yes. Absolutely.”

She finishes the last of her hot cocoa and leans forward to put the empty mug on the coffee table. “I can keep watch while you have a nap.”

“Absolutely not. Don’t you have to be up early to go to Spawn Jail?”

She blinks at him. “Lucifer. It’s Sunday.”

Usually his Rolex tells him this sort of thing. The day. The time. What bloody moon phase it is, or some such nonsense. But it had shattered like a duck egg in Hell, and he hasn’t got around to replacing it yet. “Oh. _Oh_. So it is.”

“I don’t mind,” she says eagerly. “I can stay up and watch the Disney Channel. I’ll even read you a bedtime story.”

He splutters into the last of his cocoa. 

“Beatrice,” he says scathingly. “I have never needed a _bedtime story_ in my _life_.”

The offspring’s face unexpectedly falls, eyebrows drawing into a frown. Her forehead furrows just like the detective’s when she’s unhappy. “Your parents never _read_ to you?”

He hesitates. There’s a trap here, somewhere. He’s just not sure where. “Why would they need to? I can read.”

“Because it’s _nice_ , Lucifer. My mom still reads to me sometimes, when I can’t sleep, or if I have bad dreams.” She scowls at her knees. “D’you think I’ll ever meet your dad?”

“I have no doubt you will.”

Her mouth sets in a firm line. “I’m gonna to tell Him He should’ve read you bedtime stories.”

Part of him would pay to see Beatrice Decker take on the tyrant upstairs, a pure human soul shouting at God in defense of the Devil. Another part of him shudders at the thought of that part of his future - everyone he cares about up in the Silver City, where he will never be able to follow, where he’ll never see any of them again. 

No, he’s not going to think about that. Can’t think about that. If he does, he’ll go to pieces. 

So, against his better judgement, he says, “Very well, Offspring. You can read me a story.”

She fetches _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ from her room, and he finds himself being tucked in, absurdly, on the couch; his legs dangle over the far arm when he stretches out and the soft throw blanket the spawn drags out from her room isn’t long enough to cover all of him. This whole bedtime routine nonsense seems to have an awful lot of rules - _you need to take off your shoes, Lucifer_ and _you have to do the voices, Lucifer_ and _if you don’t close your eyes it doesn’t work_. 

He doesn’t intend to actually doze off. Just to lay there with his eyes closed and her quiet voice distracting him from his own thoughts until she gets sleepy again herself and goes back to bed. 

At some point, her voice fades out. 

He wakes very briefly when the blanket shifts and a warm weight settles against his side, and then he’s gone again. 

*

It’s been years since Chloe Decker has been genuinely surprised to find Lucifer in her home first thing in the morning, but usually she knows he’s there before she sees him - she’ll wake up to the scent of freshly brewed coffee or sizzling bacon, or hear him bickering with Maze over her “inexcusable” cereal choices. 

So she startles at the sight of him on her couch as she rounds the corner into the lounge, sprawled out with his feet hanging over one arm and his head pillowed on a cushion propped against the other. The TV, turned down so low she can barely hear it, is playing a soap opera she sort of recognises. _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ , the book Trixie’s been reading before bed lately, is propped open on the coffee table, surrounded by two mugs and a glass with a little bit of wine left in it. He’s covered - mostly - by Trixie’s _My Little Pony_ blanket.

Trixie. Now _that’s_ something she never thought she’d see; Trixie’s dark head is pillowed on Lucifer’s shoulder, her hand clutching a fistful of his shirt, fast asleep with her body crammed into the tiny space between Lucifer and the back of the couch, snoring softly. Lucifer’s arm is wrapped around her like a shield. 

Chloe’s breath catches. Does he know? Does he have _any idea_ how much her little monkey missed him when they were both trying to convince themselves and each other that he’d be back eventually, that he wasn’t in danger down there? 

_The hell are you doing here, Lucifer?_ she thinks, even as her face softens and her eyes crinkle at the edges. She had no idea how much she’d miss him until he was gone - no more dirty innuendos or inappropriate jokes, no more projecting every single one of his problems onto whatever case she was working, no more _detective_. 

She’s staring. She should...probably stop that.

She slips past them and sets the coffee brewing, gets out the ingredients for Hawaiian bread. Lucifer’s jacket - the grey suit she loves on him - is hanging beside hers by the front door, and the sight of it makes her sigh contentedly. It’s still surreal, having him back, like if she turns her back on him he’ll disappear. 

She takes her coffee back into the lounge and perches on the arm of the couch. Runs her fingers gently through Lucifer’s messy hair. His eyelids flutter and he turns his head into her touch, mumbling as he wakes. “...‘tective?”

“Hey,” she murmurs, sipping her coffee. “Shh. Trixie’s sleeping.”

His eyes widen, and she presses her lips together to hold in a laugh. He turns to look at her sleeping kid like she’ll bite him if he moves too fast. She keeps petting his hair, and after a moment he relaxes into the touch, warm and drowsy and comfortable. 

“When’d you get here?” she asks him softly. 

He hums. “Two-thirty...ish? After Lux started winding down. I couldn’t sleep.” A pause. “I missed you.”

Her mouth twitches up at the corner. “You didn’t come upstairs.”

Lucifer yawns, covering his mouth with his free hand, and tilts his head back to get a better look at her. “I didn’t want to wake you, darling. I haven’t been sleeping very well, since…”

He trails off, enjoying her touch. His eyes are on the television, but she doesn’t think he’s really watching it. “I hope I didn’t overstep,” he says after a moment.

“Since when have you cared about breaking into my house?”

“I don’t,” he sounds amused. “I meant with the child. She made me a drink. And she was rather insistent that I let her read to me, for some reason.”

“As long as she wasn’t the one drinking that, you’re all good,” Chloe tells him, pointing at the wine glass. He hums noncommittally and presses his face into her hand as she moves her caresses from his hair to his cheek. “She missed you, you know. We both did.”

He catches her hand with his own, brings it to his lips, kisses it. “I missed you too, Detective.”

She smiles at him, because if she doesn’t smile she’ll cry, and he won’t understand that. “Want some breakfast?”

Lucifer holds onto her hand until she moves out of range, and then stretches. “Mmm. Please.”

“Bacon and eggs sound good to you?” 

His eyes light up, and she wonders what there is to eat in Hell. “ _Lovely_.”

She collects up the used mugs and the wine glass from the coffee table, and heads to the kitchen. “Oh, and Lucifer?”

“Yes, Detective?”

“Next time you decide to break into my house at some stupid hour of the morning, you can come upstairs. I don’t mind. Bed's comfier than the couch.” 

She can hear the three words he hasn't said yet in the affection in his voice. “Of course, Detective.”


End file.
